On Choosing Committees Based on Approval Votes in the Presence of Outliers

TL;DR

This paper investigates the computational complexity of selecting committees based on approval votes when outliers are present, revealing intractability results, parameterized complexity classifications, and approximation algorithms for various voting rules.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive complexity analysis of committee selection with outliers, including hardness results, parameterized complexity classifications, and approximation algorithms for different approval-based voting rules.

Findings

Committee selection is intractable with outliers for approval, net approval, and minisum rules.

Parameterized complexity is classified as FPT or W[1]-hard for all subsets of five natural parameters.

No polynomial approximation exists for approval and net approval rules; a (1+ε) approximation exists for minisum rule.

Abstract

We study the computational complexity of committee selection problem for several approval-based voting rules in the presence of outliers. Our first result shows that outlier consideration makes committee selection problem intractable for approval, net approval, and minisum approval voting rules. We then study parameterized complexity of this problem with five natural parameters, namely the target score, the size of the committee (and its dual parameter, the number of candidates outside the committee), the number of outliers (and its dual parameter, the number of non-outliers). For net approval and minisum approval voting rules, we provide a dichotomous result, resolving the parameterized complexity of this problem for all subsets of five natural parameters considered (by showing either FPT or W[1]-hardness for all subsets of parameters). For the approval voting rule, we resolve the parameterized complexity of this problem for all subsets of parameters except one. We also study approximation algorithms for this problem. We show that there does not exist any alpha(.) factor approximation algorithm for approval and net approval voting rules, for any computable function alpha(.), unless P=NP. For the minisum voting rule, we provide a pseudopolynomial (1+eps) factor approximation algorithm.